Wack.

I had to work on Sunday.  This means rolling out of bed, grumbling, donning various stretchy spandexy items of workout clothing, and trying to pretend I'm driving into the glorified truck stop of a college town for a workout, and oh yeah, by the way, I'm also going to drop into lab and do some work.  Me, working on the fucking weekend for the equivalent of minimum wage 4 years ago, Pushing The Boundaries Of Humankind's Knowledge.  

What utter bullshit.  

This fall, I'll be starting my fourth year of graduate school.  After a particularly impassioned rant to my advisor, he is 100% on board with my need to publish something, anything at all really, so I can start to gain some science cred.  We had a weird discussion Friday.  He said I should shoot for a publication in JBC, the Journal of Biological Chemistry (full disclosure: I had to look up the acronym when he said "JBC" because I'm useless remembering shit like that).  He described JBC as "reputable, but crappy."  After trying 4 possible definitions of "crappy" in a bid to figure out just how fucked I am, it turns out he meant conservative, un-groundbreaking science, and I had a moment.  

A moment, when I almost did a double-take to his face, because people, NO ONE outside of maybe 20-something people in the whole world give a rat's fart about what comes out of this lab.  Like, hello, you are the principle investigator of this lab, are you not?  You dictate the direction of all of our research, am I right?  Have you NOTICED how completely arcane the subject matter is that you are studying?  Let me put it this way; we are not curing cancer here.  But a publication is a publication.  I don't care, but to describe JBC as crappy because it publishes conservative science?  Whaaaat.

Anyway, that's why I was working on Sunday in a foul mood.  I slouched in wearing my nubbly Adidas slide-on sandals (they are truly magical; it's like having a foot massage as you walk), and I noticed this professor as I walked down the hall towards my lab.  He is always sitting in his concrete cube looking ancient, and if he's not in there, he's shuffling around the building staring at the floor/walls avoiding any and all eye contact, still looking ancient.  One time I spoke to him because his -80 C freezer was beeping in a way that signaled its imminent failure.  Mainly I was glad it was his freezer and not him.  I see him literally ALL THE TIME, and try as I might to just make eye contact and smile, nary a word passes between us.  

So he's sitting there, on his office door is an NYU sticker, and I thought to myself, "Hey, we share an alma mater, maybe I should start a conversation," because I was wearing an old pair of NYU standard-issue shorts, and, you know, we could bond over the purple or something...  And then I thought, why bother him?  Obviously he's here, sitting in a concrete bunker sans even a window on an uncharacteristically gorgeous, cloudless, warm, dry Sunday in late July, for a reason.  As I plated my cells, I mused on why the hell he'd opt for a weekend like this.  Maybe he's henpecked.  Maybe his plumbing is getting fixed.  Maybe this is a form of mental illness.  

That's when it struck me.  The academic ideal IS a form of mental illness.  What joy can someone get, closeting themselves away from the rest of the world WITHOUT EVEN A WINDOW every single day for the rest of their life?  What kind of person does it take to do that?  Who do you have to be to be willing to obsess over one problem literally for the rest of your life?  Because that's what you're SUPPOSED to do if you're a good academic.  

Granted, the stereotypical tweed is lovely, but that's quite a price to pay to wear tweed.  And no one does, at least not here.  It's bad sneakers, even worse khakis, and polo shirts.  Unless, of course, you opt for socks and sandals and ill-fitting jeans and the odd Hawaiian top.

I did make it to the gym after doing the plating and prep for Monday.  Hopefully soon, I'll be writing a paper.  Hopefully not too long after that, it'll be thesis + graduation time, and I'll be done with this idiosyncratic hodgepodge of questionably sane people before I start looking as antique as my fellow NYU alum down the hall...

I am living in HELL.

There is a grant proposal due. It is a sizeable one. $2 million. My adviser left it to the last minute, it seems, in true academic fashion. So, I shall backtrack on my lovely evenings.

Last night, I stopped looking at the clock in lab when it hit 10:30 PM. It was too depressing and sad. Why was I there so late? Because I had to proofread 25 single spaced pages. But it wasn't just for grammatical and spelling errors, oh no. It was to also improve the flow, so I couldn't bang through it. I had to read, reread, and figure things out. To say it was not one of my better evenings would be a bit of an understatement. I've been proofreading this damn stupid thing since last week in pieces. A paragraph here, a section there, a 6-page chunk...

This sneak-attack by my adviser of editorial duties destroyed my plans on Friday night, as well as his perception of me. I had no idea I'd be in lab until 8:30, so I had gone to the gym for an hour in the afternoon, ate lunch at my desk, and waited for him to send me things to review. That was at noon-1 PM. 4:30 rolls around and still nothing. I ate a light lunch because I was planning on meeting some people at this supposedly awesome Mexican place for happy hour - which included half-price appetizers... and nothing attracts this grad student like half price allegedly amazing Mexican tapas, tequila, and mezcal.

So, I asked if I could do the editing at home over the weekend. The answer? Absolutely not. This was bad because I was getting hungry. When I get hungry, I get wild-eyed, irritable, and slightly insane. Not conducive to being intelligent or editing, for that matter. Then I finish, I'm about to pack up and leave, when he walks in and asks me to do a literature search. What???!?!! A literature search? That could take days!

But I did it. And as I was getting ready to pack it in yet again, he asks me to add two words to my search. A mournful hopeless "noooooooooooo....!" resounded in my head, echoing around the inside of my skull and resonating in the very empty pit of my stomach which growled menacingly. I had to drag it out of my adviser, what he wanted from this literature search. I was left to my hunger and evil thoughts for 1 minute, and then he walked back in to lecture me on how I disengage too easily, how he knows I'm very social, "do the emailing" (that is a direct quote), "have a nice boy to care for" (another direct quote), how I'm never going to make it in academia if I don't care about what I'm doing because it's so competitive, and it's very obvious I have no personal emotional involvement in what I'm doing, etc etc etc. I managed to resist the urge to let out a primal scream of rage, leap on the lab bench, and start hurling glassware around.

Instead I decided to pretend I wasn't angry and just pass it off as him throwing a hissy fit at me simple because I was the only one around. This worked for about 4 hours, and then I got a splitting headache. I finally got to eat at a quarter to 10 that night, which was awful. I couldn't form a complete thought. The splitting headache lasted all day Saturday, departing for the 2 hours I spent fencing, but then it came back and lasted into Saturday night, when I finally admitted that I was furious and I hated the state of Maryland and DC and the university and academia and it was a damn good thing my idiot adviser thought I'd never make it in academia because I want to get the fuck out anyway and go back to industry where people are pleasant, social, professional, and I get a bloody great paycheck for all my brains and trouble, and I hate it I hate it I hate it.

The headache promptly evaporated, and I realize now that I am doomed to a life of constant bitching and if I don't bitch, it is hazardous to my health. I gave Danny a chance to dump me now, now that he knew, but he declined. I think he secretly finds it amusing.

But sadly, the editing did not go away. Monday was a snowday (more on this later), Tuesday was me sitting like a huge fucking idiot waiting for the editing to start up again, but nothing hit my desk until the early evening, which sucked because I blew my gym time sitting like a moron at my desk because I didn't want my adviser to walk in and not see me there, and it was (technically) 33 pages of single spaced science shit. I really despise scientific writing. I got to sleep at 12:30 last night, and all I did was walk in the door, grumble, take a shower, and go to sleep.

Thank you, grad school, for doing your best to prevent me from ever having anything roughly resembling a sex life ever again or ever seeing my bf awake or him ever seeing me awake again. YOU BLASTED FUCKERS.

Along with grad school, I think DC is in it too, this whole making me miserable by thwarting my every move thing that's been going on. Because a bunch of my friends, Danny, and I had Monday off, we decided to find a happy hour. The bar that we couldn't get to on Friday because of my editing escapades sounded promising, and we hiked out in the cold and wet to find that IT WAS CLOSED ON MONDAYS. W. T. F. But then, we thought our problems were solved when we saw a big sign for half-priced Blegian beer! Turns out - we realized this after we got our check - it wasn't half-priced on Mondays. Only Stella Artois was half-priced on Mondays, but seriously, who'd pay $8 on a normal night for a lousy fucking Stella? Only in DC, people. Only in DC. So I was thwarted again! I was drunk, but thwarted. It inspired me to canvas yelp for happy hours the city over in my downtime between editing, but I can't find anything worthwhile. It's all the same, specials on shit beer (Budweiser, Miller Light), and the same shit for snacks; nachos, fries, quesadillas, burgers, wings. It has been a sad, sad week.

Now I'm sitting here eating a burrito that has too much cheese and not enough beans and salsa. I want a Maker's Mark manhattan (or eight) made by the older bartender with the suspenders who works at Clyde's in VA. I hate everything about that place except that guy and his manhattan. They have heinous "art" on the wall - think a ginormous nude mural, airbrushed to meet today's standards of denying the fact that people have nipples, penises, vaginas, body fat, and the like. It's as if Thomas Kinkade got drunk and started painting nudes. It is SO BAD. Good thing I was drunk when I was there.

Too bad I'm not drunk right now.

The Test(es). Heh heh heh.

I think the exam went well.  And if it didn't, I don't really care as long as I did well enough.  I recently discovered that despite really needing a good grade in this course I'm enrolled in, the name of it is a mystery to me.  Biophysical chemistry or biochemical physics or something like that.  

Really, as long as I do just well enough to not have to take it again, I'll be thrilled.  

Today one of my classmates stopped my instructor and I on our way to my makeup exam to say that he had this idea at 4 AM on Saturday night to describe human relationships in terms of the Gibbs free energy equation.  If you don't know what the Gibbs free energy equation is, look it up on Wikipedia because I've thought about it far too much for one day, and I have no desire to think about it anymore.  Fuck Gibbs and his free energy.  Anyway, his analyses of human relationships as summarized by him in the stairwell were really lame, and the idea was too ridiculous and geeky even for me.  That shit was funny in high school.  This guy looks like a disheveled, vaguely homeless, 11 year old version of Jerry Lewis covered in animal hair of some kind.  And he made sure to let the prof and me know that he has a girlfriend.  How do these people who look like they don't ever wash have significant others?  

Anyway, the prof asked me what I thought after that dude left, and I said that would not be a reason for staying awake at 4 AM on a Saturday morning.  

To totally change the subject, I've been editing my advisor's grant proposal all day, and as much as I love words, I hate reading right now.  In fact, I've had it with typing too.  I'm going to bed.  

Walk for a... what?

You know what pisses me off slightly every time I hear it? These commercials of people talking about how they're Walking To Find A Cure for a given disease. Really? Walking to find a cure? Do they expect to find it sitting at the finish line?

Why don't they have "study to find a cure," as in do well in biology, chemistry, and biochemistry so then you can be a research scientist and actually do something tangible, direct, and real to "cure" the disease du jour?

But you know, it is so freakin' UNCOOL to be a scientist, whereas donning a stupid ribbon, hustling your friends and family for money, and then proceeding to walk in circles is totally the rage. First of all, unless you're an Olympic track star, getting someone to pay you to walk in circles and get nowhere is a ridiculous concept in and of itself. If it were modified, and say, we got a health insurance premium deduction for going to a gym regularly, it would be ok. But begging people for a few bucks so you can walk in circles? Sorry, no.

There are times, and this is one of them, when I start to think that some totally hot scientists need to do a scantily clad/nude spread in Esquire, or some other stupid rag, party like rock stars, and jazz it up so that we get some attention. Or someone should write a television show about the ups and downs of research science, and use grad school/research science as a setting for more sex, drugs, drama, and crazy shit. Sound familiar? Oh right, that's what Law and Order, Scrubs, House, Nip/Tuck, etc. do for other formerly geeky professions. It'll make science cooler, more people will do it, and then there will be more scientists in America, and we'll lead the world in scientific innovation. The current issue is all the scientists are coming here to get educated, and then taking their education back to wherever they're from. America has innovation out the wazoo, but we're seriously lazy entitled fucks who can't be bothered to live life without the television telling us what to do.

But this whole feeling good by not doing anything real about it - Walking To Help Find A Cure - strikes me as kind of bullshit. It's like... why not just skip the walking and those bloody stupid ribbons, donate some money, and get on with your life? Tutor some kid in science, or whatever gratis. That'll go farther.

I have no idea why, but these group feel-good sessions make me want to vomit. Maybe it's just because those of us in the trenches, like graduate students *ahem*, research scientists, and professors, as odd as some of us are, we're the ones doing the real work and we get absolutely zero glory, credit, or hot groupies giving us oral sex.